Natalee Young Terkel was twenty-six years old when she enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania. She had spent most of the previous ten years working as a yoga instructor, but says she always intended to go to college. She just didn’t think it would take so long to get there.

“It was a little weird, my first few weeks at Penn,” she says. “Most of the other freshmen, they looked like little kids to me. They were little kids. I’ve always had a youthful appearance, so I think a lot of them assumed I was about the same age as them. But a few probably could tell I was an older student; one girl even told me later she thought I was one of the instructors! She’s a close friend now.”

Natalee Young Terkel is majoring in marketing and minoring in computer programming. Marketing, she says, will open a lot of doors for her, and she seems to be the perfect personality type for the discipline. “One of the things I like about it the most is that marketing doesn’t pigeonhole you to a single business or industry,” she says. “They all need marketing campaigns, and I’ll have the skills to provide them.”

As she works toward completing her coursework, she supports herself with a job as a bartender at Calvin’s, a Penn campus hangout. She draws glasses of beer and mixes drinks four nights a week. She does not currently have a boyfriend, and says that’s a good thing. “It leaves me plenty of time to hit the books. And that is what I want to do most right now.”

Natalee Young Terkel is a marketing major at the University of Pennsylvania. She expects to graduate in the spring, and is looking forward to launching her professional career.

“My parents are a little freaked out that I haven’t graduated yet,” she says. “I turned thirty last June. But I know what I’m doing.” After she got out of high school, she says that she just wasn’t ready to continue her education yet. She knew she wanted to, but figured it could wait. “I graduated from high school with a 3.8 grade point average, so it’s not like I couldn’t get in to college. But for four years – more than that, really – all I had done was study, study, study. And I wanted to take some time to myself to see what I could do.”

By then she was into yoga, and while she wasn’t ready to continue her formal education she took enough courses to become a certified yoga instructor. She wound up doing that for six years before deciding she was ready for college. At her father’s suggestion, she decided to major in marketing. “He said that a marketing degree was extremely flexible; that it would open a lot of doors for me. I don’t have my degree just yet, but from everything I learned since then, he was right.”

Natalee Young Terkel is minoring in Computer Science, with an emphasis on programming. Computers aren’t going away any time soon, she says, so knowledge of programming is also a valuable career skill.

Natalee Young Terkel is a busy young woman. She is a full-time student at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is studying marketing and computer programming, and works four nights a week as a bartender at Calvin’s, a restaurant and bar favored by Penn students and located just off campus.

Like any dedicated student, she spends a lot of time going to classes and studying. “I practically live at the library,” she says with a laugh. “But I love it. I love studying. I love school.” She completed high school with a 3.8 grade point average, took a gap year that ballooned into nearly ten years, and has maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA since resuming her education.

When she gets a little down time, she enjoys blogging and Pinterest. “Pinterest is like my new Google,” she says. “When I’m looking for ideas of one kind or another – anything from what to make for dinner or suggestions on good movies to check out, I go to Pinterest first.”

She is hardly alone. During its relatively short existence, Pinterest has grown into the fourth-largest social media platform on the Internet. More than eighty-five million users visit the site each month. Enthusiasts like Natalee Young Terkel say that Pinterest has changed the way they do business and pursue pleasure. “Even if I don’t have something specific in mind,” she says, “I love to check out the ‘Everything’ and ‘Popular’ feeds. Without fail, I find stuff that’s new and interesting.”

Natalee Young Terkel is a student at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is studying marketing, with a focus on digital marketing. She is also taking computer programming courses.

She describes herself as a “daddy’s girl,” but adds quickly that she has always had an independent streak. “My dad and I are still really close,” she says. “But I’m my own person.” Four nights a week, she may be found tending bar at Calvin’s, a student hangout located just off the Penn campus.

Natalee Young Terkel is on track to graduate with her marketing degree next spring. She enrolled in Penn’s marketing curriculum at the suggestion of her father, and she says that it has turned out to be a really good match. “My dad said that a marketing degree would open a lot of doors, and he was right,” she says. “What he didn’t know when he first started telling me to think about marketing, was how much the industry would change. That is, how much it would be impacted by the Internet. Although when I think about it, maybe he did know, because he’s a smart guy and there isn’t much that hasn’t been impacted by the Internet.”

Natalee Young Terkel spent her sophomore year on board the Surprise, as part of the Semester at Sea program. That experience, she says, opened her eyes to the larger world around her. During its three-month voyage around the world, the Surprise stopped at numerous port cities on five continents, and left her with a new global perspective.

Natalee Young Terkel enjoys her studies in Marketing and Computer Coding at the University of Pennsylvania, but she believes that reaching past the student community and into the world is important in her development into professional life. She travels and participates in new activities as much as she can to broaden her horizons and expand her life experience.

Her passion for rollerblading leads her to meet new people and her involvement in this community has helped her to expand past the university. She has friends from many areas of her life, including university, and she enjoys introducing them to each other to mix parts of her life together. She finds that some students are so focused on university that they don’t interact with those outside of the university community.

As a sociable person, she has always loved to interact with a range of people. She ensures that she tries new experiences often to keep her perspective fresh and to revitalize her existing passions. Alongside her studies she works as a bartender and pursues interests in photography and writing.

Natalee Young Terkel believes that broadening her horizons as a student will give her an advantage when it comes to finding a career. She has more opportunities from which to base her career choice, as well as a wide network of people from all walks of life who she can rely upon. She emphasizes the importance of leaving the university ‘bubble’ to try new things and meet new people.

Natalee Young Terkel, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, finds it difficult to stay still in terms of her life. She is constantly growing and searching for new experiences which could enrich her lifestyle. Moving forward is important to her, both in terms of her career and her physical well-being.

As an active person, she exercises regularly, at least once every day. She enjoys various sports including yoga, rollerblading and volleyball. Individual sports help her to get into the right mindset to study, while playing in a team is a fun activity that is intense and rewarding. Her love of exercise began as a child in a family of six, playing with her siblings and having fun. Physical activity is an important part of her daily habits and she couldn’t live without it.

Travelling is another aspect of her life that helps her to improve and broaden her outlook on life. She visited various countries on a semester exchange at sea, touring from South Africa to South America. The learning experiences on such a trip are uniquely valuable and she attributes her ability to evaluate different perspectives to the insight gained on this lengthy trip.

Natalee Young Terkel is a student who cares about more than just the student community. On her travels, she has had many new experiences which have enriched her life. Getting out of her comfort zone and testing her limits are important to her development as someone who hopes to have a career in Marketing or Computer Coding.

Natalee Young Terkel is working towards her degree in Coding and Marketing but is surprised at the lack of women choosing a similar course. An enthusiastic individual with a multitude of creative interests, she is loving her degree and doesn’t understand why more people don’t pick a similar path.

In today’s technology-filled world, everything revolves around computers. Smart-phones, social media, and tablets, are all common objects nowadays which require computer code to function. Coding is one of the most useful skills to have in today’s job market, but less than 12% of Bachelor’s Degrees in Computer Science are awarded to woman.

Natalee Young Terkel loves her degree and wants to encourage more young women to choose similarly. Her combination of Marketing and Coding as her majors is unique and will set her apart in a job market which often seeks both of those skills. Being a woman in a male-dominated field will also set her apart, and she is driven to succeed with her hard-working personality.

Natalee Young Terkel doesn’t only want to see more women studying the Computer Sciences, she thinks that it would be a wise choice for many people. Instead of pursuing business degrees such as Marketing by themselves, some computer science papers enhance business-related skill sets and take people to the next stage of employability. As well as the employability, she thinks more people should know that it is an enjoyable subject with many opportunities for creativity and problem-solving skills.